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Outer Planets Alliance
Background Established in the wake of the Solar Civil War, the Outer Planets Alliance - commonly known as the OPA - is a protectorate of the Republic of Titan which is mostly self-governed. In exchange for guaranteed independence and military protection, the OPA is required only to pay taxes to the Republic's central government and to enforce mandated military service for adults. Unlike the Republic, voting rights in the OPA are extended to all citizens, not only to those who served in the military or who were officially excused from service, although dodging conscription may still result in fines or a prison sentence. The Alliance consists of those colonies which were too far from Saturn or too politically divergent to participate in the Republic's newly formed government. Individual colonies in the OPA have little to do with one another and may have drastically different laws, living conditions and milieus, although there are plenty of similarities between those which orbit the same planet. The OPA extends from Uranus' orbit to the Kuiper belt, where there are a litany of small colonies - mostly ice harvesting and mining operations. History The OPA was founded in 2265, one year after the end of the Solar Civil War and the birth of the Republic of Titan. During that first year, the colonies in the outer solar system discovered how difficult it would be to have any influence in the Citizen's Assembly on Titan. A combination of factors which included physical distance as well as strong differences in political opinion and social environments led to the Republic abandoning the idea of including the outer planets in the assembly. Instead, the Republic released the outer solar system as an independent protectorate and established the Colonial Authority, a central governing body based on the most populous of Uranus' moons, Ariel. The various colonies within the OPA were given the right to self-govern, with the Colonial Authority acting as arbitrator for regional elections. In the proceeding years, the Republic of Titan and the United Earth Federation worked to heal their wounds and eventually forged a defensive alliance to protect humankind from alien threats. In 2274, the citizen service requirement in the Republic was extended to its constituent territories in the OPA. This was widely considered to be the end of the transitional period after the Solar Civil War, and the beginning of the OPA's history as a cohesive entity. Though at first many citizens were dismayed with the new laws, this lasted for only a short time, as the Republic's influence on regional economic policies and willingness to fund infrastructure projects led to enormous improvements in quality of life across the board for everyone living in the Uranus or Neptune planetary systems. As the inner solar system stabilized with the end of the Solar Civil War, the following decades saw an explosion in criminal activity in the OPA. The soldiers from both sides who had turned to banditry after the war fled from the inner solar system to hide from law enforcement and find new sources of plunder. In response, the Colonial Authority issued a declaration empowering the colonies to form their own militias separate from the Republic's Space Armada, and that any citizen who joined a colonial militia would be fulfilling their military service requirement. Structure The structure of the OPA's individual regional governments varies from place to place, and for the most part each colony is allowed to rule itself in whatever way it sees fit. The only exceptions to this are that every colony must pay taxes to the Colonial Authority and that citizens are required to serve in the military by law. In many cases, however, citizens are able to be excused from military service based on health, mental or family issues, and the Central Authority is notably more lenient about this than the Republic. The Colonial Authority functions as a limited legislative assembly for the OPA, allowing representatives from the various colonies to make their cases on important matters. Additionally, the Colonial Authority serves as an adjudicator for inter-colony legal matters, as well as a liaison between the colonies and the central government on Titan. The Colonial Authority is also the primary organizing force for the colonial militias all across the OPA, and takes responsibility for maintaining an up-to-date information network accessible by all militias, as well as for redistributing troops during times of imminent crisis. In general, the Republic keeps its hands off the OPA in regards to legislation and regulations, however there are some extreme cases that constitute exceptions to this rule. Most importantly, the OPA is not to become a safe haven for mutants or runaway androids, and the same regulations that apply to them in the Republic must apply in all OPA territories as well. Secondarily, the Colonial Authority seeks to prevent predatory business practices and to ensure that citizens of the OPA are not working in laborious, slave-like conditions.